President Obama’s strategy for dealing with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria may be completely different from anything we have ever seen before.

Obama is scheduled to formally announce his strategy to defeat ISIS on Wednesday night at 9 p.m EST. This comes a few days after he was criticized for admitting he did not yet have a strategy to confront the extremist Sunni group. Obama is likely to use the recent beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff as a rallying point for American support. According to Dr. Mahmood Monshipouri, an International Relations Professor at San Francisco State University, Obama will also ask for support from France, Denmark, Australia and Germany, all Western nations which have large Muslim populations. Monshipouri hopes that the United States will work with local Sunni tribes in Syria and Iraq to garner support and prevent more people from joining ISIS’ ranks.

ISIS currently occupies an area about the size of the United Kingdom across Syria and Iraq and they are determined to maintain that land. Unlike other terrorists groups, such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS is very well-funded. They have access to most of the oil wells in Syria and have actually begun selling the siphoned oil back to Syria to supply its own military machine, which includes captured Iraqi tanks and American howitzers. Besides purchasing arms, ISIS is able to pay its fighters much better than moderate rebels in Syria or governmental forces, a major recruiting factor.

According to Terry McCarthy, President and CEO of Los Angeles World Affairs, Americans are strongly for intervention to stop ISIS. After the beheadings of two American journalists, “they don't want to see ISIS continue this barbaric reign of terror in Syria and Iraq,” he said. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll revealed that an overwhelming number of Americans view ISIS as a serious threat to American interests. However, with the harrowing past of United States' presence in Iraq and Afghanistan still fresh in the nation's mind, Obama will not be able to get boots on the ground without significant pushback. As he said, deploying ground troops would be "a profound mistake."

Both McCarthy and Monshipouri believe that the U.S. must work with local forces if it wants to defeat ISIS. Monshipouri says the situation the U.S. faces with ISIS is very similar to the one it encountered during the Vietnam War. Without local support, ISIS can simply run off to surrounding villages and hide out, much like what the Viet Cong did in Vietnam. While American air strikes can help stem the ISIS invasion, ground forces are still needed to clean up the mess left behind, according to McCarthy. If the U.S. and its allies can create a situation where they fight against ISIS alongside Sunni groups in Iraq and Syria, the chances of victory are significantly higher. 

This creates the awkward situation where America might have to work with Syria and Iran, two nations that it does not have particularly fond relations with. The BBC reports that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has already authorized his top commander to coordinate the fight against ISIS with U.S., Kurdish and Iraqi forces. 

It seems to be a difficult situation. Iran is already providing limited military support to Iraq since it does not want to see a Sunni extremist group topple a fellow Shia nation. And because of strained relations with Syria, Obama cannot send in military forces to support the embattled nation.

“In Syria, the boots on the ground have to be Syrian," Obama said Sunday in an interview with Meet the Press.

If Obama wants support from Assad to fight ISIS, it means he will have to forget about the atrocities, including using chemical weapons on his own citizens, that Assad has committed. 

So if there will be “no [Western] boots on the ground,” then Western forces must train and equip local Iraqi and Kurdish forces says McCarthy. This takes a lot of time and money, which is why Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that defeating ISIS may take years. 

“We are going to be a part of an international coalition, carrying out air strikes in support of work on the ground by Iraqi troops,” Obama also said in Meet the Press. 

This new strategy of leading the effort against ISIS but not sending in ground troops “might be a new precedent for how the U.S. will be involved in future conflicts,” says Monshipouri. 

It does not help that Iraqi forces are extremely disorganized and divided among themselves. The Iraqi army is a Shia-Sunni mix and does not cooperate well since the Shia government has persecuted Sunnis ever since Nouri al-Maliki was appointed Prime Minister in 2006.  These actions make it difficult for Sunnis to fight for a country that simply does not respect them. This explains why 30,000 Iraqi soldiers ran from 800 ISIS fighters when they approached Mosul. 

If all else fails and the United States gets embroiled in another Middle East conflict, the costs could mean billions of dollars for the country, says Monshipouri. With only a year and a half left in Obama’s presidency, Monshipouri believes that another war would likely spill over into the lap of the next administration. 

Regardless of what happens next, there is no doubt that the U.S. is going to be extending its stay in the Middle East.

Reach Staff Reporter Benjamin Dunn here.

Web Producer Heidi Carreon contributed to this report.